Wheels of Fortune
WHEELS OF FORTUNE
A fabulous few for the financially well-to-do
FINDING THE FIVE MOST VALUABLE, MOST DESIRable, most collectible motorcycles in the world ought to be easy. But it isn’t. Ask a collector, any collector, to name his Fab Five, and the response you get will be colored not by some clearly defined, purely distilled understanding of what’s hot and what’s not, but by that collector’s own tastes, memories, realities, and preferences—and more likely than not, by what he’s got out back in the garage.
We asked three of the most knowledgeable collectors we know to short-list the World’s Five Most Collectible Motorcycles, fully expecting little agreement. Our expectations were met. The three are Rob Iannucci, a New York collector who has achieved wide recognition as one of the dynamos of Team Obsolete, which has been outstandingly successful in vintage racing; show-biz heavyweight Jay Leno, an eclectic collector-enthusiast with a great eye for desirable bikes; and Sammy Miller, a former British racing star who presides over a formidable collection which is housed in the Sammy Miller Museum, in New Milton, England.
First, Iannucci, who believes, for starters, that the very most collectible motorcycles have to be competition machines. “They were never built to a price, they were very single-purpose and more than anything else, they were works of passion,” he says. And what are his choices? “No collection is complete without a Matchless G50. There were only 200 of them, built between 1959 and 1962.” The one to have? “Mine, number 1709,” says Iannucci unabashedly, referring to the bike that Dave Roper recently took to victory at the Isle of Man vintage races. “It’s gotta be worth 50,000 bucks, maybe 100,000. Who knows?” Less storied examples sell for around $30,000.
“Second,” continues Iannucci, “is the ex-Rollie Free Vincent Black Lightning, built by the factory for Free’s record runs at Bonneville in 1950. My wife owns that, it’s worth well over $100,000. And no, that’s not the bike Free rode while stretched out, wearing a bathing suit. That’s now in street trim and being ridden around somewhere in Michigan.
“Third, the ex-factory MV Agusta that was the last MV to ever win a grand prix—that was, I think, 1 976, would have been at the Nurburgring, with Agostini aboard. It’s a 350cc dohc Four, six-speed. It’s now in La Spezia, Italy, owned by Team Obsolete, Ltd., and is the subject of pending litigation. What’s it worth? Let’s just say, very expensive.
“Fourth? No serious collector should be without a Manx Norton, and the ultimate Manx would have to be a short-stroke 350 with an outside flywheel. There are only about a half-dozen of those, only one in the U.S., and I own it. Value? About $75,000.
“The last one—that’s a tough choice. I’d say, the Dick Mann BSA Rocket III that won Daytona in 1971. As to its value, I don’t know. It’s never been restored, it’s still very original; I got it directly from the factory. I don’t know how to put a value on a bike like that. It’s just not for sale.”
Leno’s choices are as elusive and rare as Iannucci’s. Though Leno’s five picks include two racebikes, for his own collection, he has another requirement. “Is it streetable? That’s my number-one criteria,” Leno says. “If it’s not something I can take out for a Sunday morning and blast around on, I don’t want it.”
The top of his list, though, is an American-built racer, one that achieved fame on the notorious board tracks that dotted the U.S. in the years before World War I. “The Cyclone was built from 1913 to 1917, had bevel-drive, overhead-cams, was. a V-Twin. What’s one worth? I have no idea; whatever you can get for it, I guess.” says Leno of the 100-mph bikes.
Second, Leno lists another competition machine, the Vincent Black Lightning, though he says he prefers the Black Shadow, an example of which he owns, because of its much more streetable nature. Third, Leno lists a Brough Superior SSI00, much like the 1938 model written about in the preceding article. Fourth? “Early Indians, those with serial numbers under 10. Guys go crazy for those, though that’s not necessarily my cup of tea.”
And fifth? “An MV Agusta 750 Four; but it would have to be a streetbike.” And yes, Leno’s increasingly comprehensive collection includes one of these.
Sammy Miller, reached by telephone at his museum on Britain’s channel coast, southwest of London, was far less talkative than the other members of our impromptu panel, but ever)' bit as positive about the bikes that belong on his Fab Five list.
“The V-Eight Moto Guzzi. There was only one, that’s got to be one of the most collectible bikes in the world. I think second would possibly be my 1939 AJS supercharged V-Four, the first bike to go around a GP course at 100 miles an hour. Third would probably be a Gilera four-cylinder,” says Miller, referring to the mighty, Italian-built 500, examples of which Geoff Duke rode to world titles in 1953, ’54 and ’55.
“Fourth would probably be the Velocette Roarer,” the interesting, if ill-fated, supercharged verticalTwin of 1939, says Miller, “and fifth would probably be the six-cylinder Honda 250,” the 17,000-rpm screamer as raced by such luminaries as Mike Hailwood and Jim Redman in the middle Sixties. “Values? Oh, I can’t put values on them,” says Miller.
And neither can anyone else. Indeed, values assigned even through the tender ministrations of the auction process are temporary, mere numbers of the moment, changing, mostly upwards, constantly. The only thing that’s certain about most of the bikes on this list, in fact, is that few of us will ever have the chance to see one, much less ride—or even better, own-one. And that rarity is the very factor which makes them eligible to be members of that special club most rightly called The Fabulous Few.
—Jon F. Thompson
